What the Hell is With People and Conveniece Foods? page 4

[jacmac]

I am the youngest of 5 and my mum and sister are great cooks the kind that can make something outta nothing!
As a child I left them to the kitchen and as result when I first moved out of home called my mum to ask how long it takes to boil potatoes! I laugh at that now as I cook from scratch these days.
Plastic food is for plastic people!

[oliviascotland]

I was lucky that I grew up living with my mother and grandparents as my mother worked long hours, and my grandmother cooked absolutely everything from scratch and taught me to cook, too. I also had to learn cooking at school (we had no choice whatsoever in the matter!), so when I finally moved out from home cooking from scratch was the only thing I knew. I was horrified when the first flat-share I went to only had a microwave for cooking in - I'd never seen one before. Still, I saved up and bought a mini oven with a 2-ring hob on top, which did me fine, and my flat-mate soon reduced my rent and went for home cooked food rather than the microwave dinners!

My step-mother, though, very rarely cooked anything from scratch. M&S ready meals were the order of the day (I do remember a particularly nasty incident with a frozen omelette).

Thankfully all my children know how to cook. I started them young, peeling vegetables around the kitchen table together, which was great fun as we all had a laugh, and progressing from there. It was, of course, all CW fare, but at least they were cooking! My eldest cooked her first Christmas Dinner with no help at all from me (I had a broken wrist) when she was 13, and my youngest (now 12) has been cooking complete meals for at least 3 years. It helps that they all have food allergies, so can't use ready meals, and have to learn how to deal with real food. I hope they pass it on to their children.

[Catherine]

When you look at marketing, except for a few generic ads (pork, the other white meat; beef, it's what's for dinner; the incredible edible egg; etc.), we're slammed with ads for specific foods of convenience - 10% pure fruit juice, healthy chocolate cereals, those microwave steam bags with veggies and gross sauces - the list goes on and on. People who grew up on this kind of advertising may really not know any better.

everyone needs to see the movie Idiocracy.

[Damiana]

I was fortunate that my parents cooked and fed us well when I was a child, but I came here from a country where processed foods were pretty much nonexistent in our daily diet, so chips, packaged and frozen foods, etc were novelties to me and I sought to eat them over home cooking. I'm amazed I stayed as scrawny as I did. I remember eating entire boxes of Pringles and Little Debbie's in an afternoon of reading.

[blissfull]

Being the primary cook for a family of 8 I certainly have times when "convenience" foods are really "convenient". I have
those nights when we are popping food into the microwave or putting a frozen pizza in the oven. HOWEVER I have many
more nights when we are making homemade pizzas and other meals from "scratch". Our family is not the norm though.
My children for the most part think our family is weird because we don't have soda in the house and that don't have a pantry stocked with an all you can eat bonanza of packaged cookies and chips. I use to not believe their stories about friend whose
packed lunches from home were "lunchables" everyday along with an extra juice box and bag of chips but I have seen this
first hand. Hamburger Helper is also the norm as well as frozen waffles etc, NORMAL everyday stuff not just once in a while.
I grew up with homemade spaghetti sauce and homemade everything. I desperately wanted the brand name stuff I saw in the
commercials so I try and buy these sort of items from time to time. They are convenient but not necessary with some planning. As for whether I like to actually cook or not, I don't like to cook for others, but I do it because I have to or we will
starve. Buying pre-made boxed food to live off of just doesn't seem healthy to me. I cannot wrap my head around the thought
of someone thinking that it is but many people do think it is an alright way to live. It isn't even good for the Earth!

It also may seem crazy but we held back on signing our daughter up for fall softball this year because we were tired of
the relentless begging to go to a fast food joint before AND after each and every game, which I did not give in to because
I don't like fast food and what the heck is the point of playing sports if you are having a breakfast of meat biscuits, chocolate
milk and hash browns, followed by a lunch of milk shakes and happy meals OR better yet stopping at 2 places after games-
one for fries and hamburgers with soda of course AND THEN the ice cream shop! In my day we would maybe go to a pizza
place at the end of the season with the whole team. Not anymore MY kids of course think I am weird and super mean
because we always drove straight by the fast food places as their teammates family cars would pull in one after the other.
It really doesn't take much more effort to drive home and make a quick lunch but that just isn't the normal thing to do anymore.

Now that some of our kids are at an age where they can choose what they eat I am seeing a couple of extremes.
I have a 19 year old (female if that matters) that lives off of microwavable foods, even that breakfast hash stuff in the
original post when we have eggs, onions, peppers and such in the house ready to be cooked, granola bars, ramen noodles etc.
She spends half her paychecks at Walmart buying instant crap.
I also have an 18 year old female who whips up homemade pancakes, vegetable stir frys and homemade pies like they are nothing. All she needs are veggies in the frig, eggs and other staples and she is good to go. She just shakes her head at her
sister.
So I am not sure if it is how we are raising our kids (the examples we are setting) or just personality types and the availability
of processed verses real foods, self discipline or whatever. I just know that it seems like I am not the "normal" anymore and
am sort of known as the extreme. I know that I am not "extreme", not at all.

[magnolia1973]

I think the best is the pre-peeled bananas.

[Goldie]

I think the best is the pre-peeled bananas.

You have GOT to be kidding. They actually have these? I've seen packets of already-sliced apples (also nuts), but a PRE-PEELED banana?

We're all doomed.

[AuroraB]

At our house, convenience foods are all the left overs that can be re-heated, either in the microwave or the stove. Oh yeah, nuts and fruits too!
There is the rare occasion that I'll find a frozen pizza in the deep freeze but that's when my husband has made a trip to the store. Thank God that doesn't happen very often.

[sakura_girl]

It also may seem crazy but we held back on signing our daughter up for fall softball this year because we were tired of the relentless begging to go to a fast food joint before AND after each and every game, which I did not give in to because I don't like fast food and what the heck is the point of playing sports if you are having a breakfast of meat biscuits, chocolate milk and hash browns, followed by a lunch of milk shakes and happy meals OR better yet stopping at 2 places after games-one for fries and hamburgers with soda of course AND THEN the ice cream shop! In my day we would maybe go to a pizza place at the end of the season with the whole team. Not anymore MY kids of course think I am weird and super mean
because we always drove straight by the fast food places as their teammates family cars would pull in one after the other.
It really doesn't take much more effort to drive home and make a quick lunch but that just isn't the normal thing to do anymore.

To be fair, those times are the best for socializing with the rest of the team. Maybe do a compromise and let them have lunch with their mates sometimes?

[Sandra in BC]

I don't really get it either. Then again, I've never been a working parent with children. Maybe there aren't enough hours in the day.

I call bullshit on anyone who uses that as an excuse.

I am the product of two working parents (and a single mom until awesome stepdad arrived) and between sports and activities for all of us, we still ate dinner together at the table almost every night.

They did not rely on prepackaged convenience foods for every meal. Meals weren't always exciting -- meat, rice/potatoes, frozen/canned veg...or a casserole...Sometimes it was soup & sandwiches or bacon & eggs... but they were economical, plentiful, relatively balanced and not full of mystery ingredients. Mom used the crock pot a lot, even if it meant getting up 15 min earlier to brown some meat before tossing it in. Dad got home first, so he sprinkled some seasoning on the chicken pieces or pork chops and tossed them in the oven. Sometimes we ate the same meal 2 nights in a row. We kids (and dad) learned to cook around age 10, and each were responsible for 1 meal a week, taking the pressure off mom.

Takeout was a very rare treat. Like we were lucky if we got pizza or chinese or fish & chips once a month. Not once a month EACH...one take out meal a month. Maybe.

Probably the most exciting convenience food they bought was frozen french fries. Which really don't save any time. It was more of a treat, along with the occasional TV dinner...the kind in the aluminum tray! So fun! Again, the only time saved was in the prep, since they still needed to go into the oven. We didn't have a microwave until I was in my teens.